Elder Tanner Smith - Ghana Accra Mission

So this week was a lot slower then the last couple, we only taught about 31 lessons but man everything is still so crazy. We were able to confirm 5 people this last Sunday and it was awesome. They are so curious in the gospel, one of the recent converts is trying to dive into really deep doctrine with us, like things I don't even know, but his desire is great.

My companion went easier on me this week which was really nice. I've really appreciated his help with lessons. We have a translator during some lessons. It’s a little frustrating when we will say something and then the translator member will get ahead of us and teach the whole lesson. I won't know that he has gone ahead with the lesson but my companion knows since he understands the language better. So I will continue to talk and tell them stuff that the member already told them and it just confuses the investigator.

My companion doesn't like stopping for breaks during the day. On a typical day we wake up at 6:30 and exercise for 30 minutes, eat breakfast, have personal study, apartment study, companion study, and then get ready and leave at the latest by 11:00. We never stop for lunch, part of the reason is because we never know when people will feed us, and if someone feeds us here they feed us A LOT. So I am still losing a lot of weight. We have a lesson planned every hour of every day basically until 8:00 at night.

The pace slowed down this week since we just had 5 baptisms this month. We already have 3 more investigators with dates! Two are a father and a son named Christopher and Michael. Michael is 16 years old. They are doing really well. We love teaching them because they are so accepting of what we teach. The other investigator committed for baptism is a girl named Joyclene. She is very open with us as well and we've had some very spiritual lessons with her. Some of the things she shared with us are very personal so I won’t mention them, but watching her feel the Holy Ghost and seeing how the atonement is working in her life is a real treat.

Anyway those three people were what really made this week. So to answer some of your questions, Aywe is a very hard language so I only know how to say, “how are you”. They speak similar to the french and use their tongue in a very strange way so it's difficult. We don't have Ipads here. They are too valuable for this area so they would just be stolen. Plus the power is off most days so there isn't really a way to charge them. Even today the power was out so we went to another city to email. We bike everywhere so the mission provides a bike. If we break it or it is stolen and it was our fault, then we have to pay for the replacement. Every mission apartment has a mosquito net for each missionary.

Yes, I will be washing all my clothes by hand for the rest of my mission. Today the power is out so our water pump isn't on. I have no idea how to get water to wash my clothes so this will be interesting!

We usually eat out at member’s homes about four times a week. We have a sweet woman who makes the missionaries tons of food every Saturday. The meals we make ourselves are just like making a lot of stew at the beginning of the week and then we eat it with rice for the rest of the week. Sometimes it lasts two weeks, It's a lot of the same food. I had kinke for the first time this week and man was it nasty! The rice cooker works when power is on, but it never makes enough rice for my companion and I so we just use a pot.

I tried to send more pictures but my camera died and I can't charge it because we have no power today. So sorry I only got one picture out this week. These are some kids around a member’s house that always come running out to meet me.

My allergies are not bad and I’ve had no congestion. We have a fridge but it only works when we have power. This last week our compound was out of power for four days because someone messed up the wiring. A lot of our food spoiled.

Last Sunday the mission president surprised us at our ward. President Heid told me my MTC companion ate something bad and has been sick the majority of his time here. He's been in the hospital for a while. The only person i've seen from the Provo MTC is Elder Fesolai, He is from Australia and is way cool. I got to know him really well on the flight over. We are in the same zone so I see him every once in a while..

I'm actually starting to really really like banku and fufu. As long as the soup stays hot while you eat it, it is really good. Especially when you are hungry! And none of the pictures on my missionary blog are of Banku, they are all fufu. Banku isn't inside the soup it’s in a plastic bag and you pinch a piece off the ball and then dip it in the soup. Fufu is just inside of the soup. It's not hard to eat because you don't have to chew it. Once I got down the whole not chewing things and swallowing them whole, it made it a ton easier.

I love you all and tell Taryn good luck this week if she ends up having the baby!

Sorry there was no email last week. I was on the computer for 30 minutes then the lights went out. All electricity in western Africa comes from the dam at Lake Volta and a company called ECG (Electrical Company of Ghana). The electricity goes out often here. There is a large chance that it will go off every day. So, sorry there was no email.

These last two weeks have been really, really busy. Last week, my companion and I had our first baptism and then this week we had 4 more! Wow! 5 already this month is crazy. Out of the five, I only really taught 3 of them and they are a family.

I’ll start at the beginning of last week. So the days were going really slow, but we had a ton of lessons. I think about 40 lessons in total that week. Saturday was my birthday and I went on exchanges with the other missionary in our district so that my companion and the District Leader could go do baptismal interviews with our candidates. It was a day of a lot of finding and nothing really special happened during the day, just a normal day. Later that night, every Saturday we go to a members for a FM (free meal) and so we went there and it is tradition that if it is your birthday then they dunk you with water. So my companion told them it was my birthday and after we got done eating my birthday meal (Banku, Yum right!...) They sat me down on a stool and dumped water on me for about 10 minutes straight. I have pictures that I'll send next week. I was very wet! After that we had our PEC meeting at the church house and I had to sit in an air conditioned room for an hour and I was freezing cold! Anyway that was the only thing that really happened out of the ordinary that day, so besides that it was just a normal day. I haven't got your package yet either. I think that it's just sitting at the mission home and no one wants to come out to Klagon to give it to me. Hopefully I can get it soon! So that was the biggest thing last week. The baptism was awesome. His name is Prince Ofor and he is from Nigeria and he is the coolest guy in the world. He was a professional Futbol (soccer) player in Nigeria and then he decided to move to Ghana with some friends. He's been taking lessons from the missionaries for about a year and he finally got baptized so it's awesome.

This last week wasn't so great. We were super busy all week and on Wednesday I had a very bad lesson. I was very fatigued and my companion was getting frustrated with me during the lessons for not talking enough, so he told me in the next lesson he wasn't going to talk at all. It was a lesson with two women and they only speak Aywe so we had a member present to translate. I really had no idea what was going on in the lesson and we had somewhere to be so I ended in the middle of the lesson and we left. The member was a returned missionary and him and my companion chastised me for like 10 minutes on how bad I suck at teaching. The next morning in companion study, my companion went off again chastising me for not knowing the Bible well enough. He has a firm belief that we should only use the Bible for the first couple of lessons because that is what people know and man it was rough. I just wanted to lay down all day, but we went out and I was trying really hard to be more involved in the lessons and the day was much better then the one previously. I feel like I am doing much better in lessons, but my companion is still upset that I don't have a lot of scriptures memorized in the Bible. So that's what I'll be working on the most this week! Saturday we had our service project. All of Africa had a service project I think because I got some pictures from Brian Woolley doing some service as well.

Dad mentioned that some in Accra went to the beach but the Stake that I'm in (Tema Stake) went to Tema General Hospital to paint the building. We woke up at 4:30am in the morning to get to the church by 5:30 and then left in a bus with our ward at 6:30. We worked from 7am – 11am and it was real fun. I was able to contact 2 people, but they live in different areas, so I sent the areas their information. We got home and then went straight out to proselyte. We didn't get home till around 9:30pm and I don't think I've ever been so tired. I fell asleep almost instantly that night and my companion told me that I was sleep talking and that I was teaching the Word of Wisdom and I was speaking very clear. I don't think I've ever slept talked in my life, but I guess it is in my genes! lol!

Sunday was really busy as well. We woke up early to fill up the baptismal font. We were able to have 9 investigators in church! It was missionary Sunday. We gave all of the talks and taught all of the lessons during the day. President Heid even came to give us a nice surprise and teach the investigator/recent convert class. He is a very good teacher, but I wasn’t able to see him teach because I was teaching the youth class. It was a good Sunday! This week we had some crazy numbers as well. I think we taught about 37 lessons and we have 4 more people with baptismal dates in September! It was really rough because of my struggles in lessons, but we have been blessed with people more prepared then I ever thought possible. Things still aren't easy, but I am getting more familiar with how things work, so it makes it much easier. I can tell you guys have been praying for me and I am seeing the blessings.

Today, (Monday), we went to Nungua to play basketball with the missionaries there. There is a mall there that really reminds you of the US and Elder Barnes and I went on exchanges there. We even got a cheeseburger and fries! I'll make sure to send pictures next week.

To answer some questions: My companion’s brother is a Bishop back home, but his mom and other brother aren't members. He took the news about his girl friend surprisingly well.

The culture is getting a lot easier and eating foods isn’t so bad anymore. Yesterday night though I had to eat like 3 pounds of fufu. I thought I would explode!

That is about all that’s happened these last two weeks. I am writing about our lessons and spiritual experiences in my journal at night so don't think I'm ignoring these events. It's just a lot to write!

Hey everyone!!So this week was pretty stressful. It started off well. My companion and I had some high goals for this week. We have SIX people getting baptized in the month of august (hopefully) And then we have another with a date in September. In the MTC they tell you to challenge people to baptism on the first lesson but our mission president told us not to since people out here will just say yes to be nice and they wont be ready. These people are the nicest people in the world though. They always say hi and are very friendly. They always call me obolo which means fat boy, but here it is a compliment I guess, haha. We are teaching like 4 people right now who dont speak any english so we have to have a member present which is hard because I get lost in the conversation so easily. The language is still really hard for me and some of the names are very hard to remember too.

Anyway the beginning of the week went really well and then I got sick on Friday and Saturday. I thought my appendix burst or something. Anyway it was really bad and I had to sit in the apartment all Friday and Saturday. Sunday our bishop's daughter was blessed so we went to a party at his house after church. I had Fufu for the first time and i finished it! its still pretty hard to swallow these things without chewing but i'm getting better. Also most of his family aren't members so there was tons of alcohol and I accidentally had a coke that was spiked with something. I couldn't tell until my companion had the last little bit but I thought It just tasted goofy because it was made out here! I felt really bad, but another elder in my district said the same thing happened to him when he went to a funeral. These people drink a lot of alcohol and if they aren't they drink malt (non alcoholic bear).The members drink that a lot so i've been getting used to having it!

To answer a lot of your questions, if you want to send me something you send it to the mission home then they bring it to me. We don't have any real address or mailbox or anything like that. I was grateful that I got to catch up on some sleep this week even though it really sucked staying in the apartment for two days. My companion takes me running every other day at 5:00 in the morning which is very tiring haha but hopefully it'll make me slim down a bit! The hardest thing I did this week was try and eat while I was sick because I could barely keep it down. The best experience i've had this week was having one of our investigators have a special interview and pass and just seeing his true desire to get baptized. He makes it so easy to teach and he's already being a missionary to his wife who wouldn't take discussions at first. His wife said that she would probably join the church eventually! Also we met with a young man about 16 years old and he said he wants to be baptized. We taught our lesson and said goodbye to his father and he said he loved our church and wants to join after his son, then his stepmother walked outside with a Book of Mormon and said she had been reading it and wants to know more! Man the Lord truly prepares people. Hopefully we can baptize that whole family in September but we don't want to get our hopes up!

Anyway thats pretty much all that happened this week. We couldnt reach a lot of our goals since I was in bed for two days so that was kind of a bummer. Thank you for all of your prayers! Things will always have adversity i'm just trying to push through It!Love Elder Smith